Hackathon Experience: Do Not Give Up

Hello! Today, I am going to tell you one of my experiences. It was a very simple story while I am still undergoing college life. I learnt so much from this experience and arguably, this is one of the moment that made me very striving to moving forward no matter how grieving is the situation. 

In some time at 2012, I gathered some of my friends to compete to a local hackaton at Bandung. The four of us met and discussed our ideas since about one month before the hackathon. Almost every week we dedicated some hours to review our ideas and pick the best one. We do not want to compete with just "good enough" idea. We want to build an idea that has a great potent to make impact and winning the hackathon.

And it comes to three days before the hackathon. It started with a simple question I asked. "Do you guys have applied the hackathon ticket?". They looked very surprised and from their reaction, I could simply concluded that they have not. I was not saying things like "I have told you guys to apply the tickets since a long time ago", but I quickly check the website and found that the tickets has sold out. Our morale suddenly drops, but we know that we would not walk away without a fight.

So, we sent an email to the committee to explain our situation and asked for additional tickets for the rest of the team. Surprisingly, the response was quick. It really made us amazed since in our mind, it would take a couple day if we contacted someone by email. The answer is simple but exhilarating. He said that he will help us. Pheww. It. Was. Com. For. Ting. From a short moment of intense, the room cooled down drastically. Then, we continue with the discussion as scheduled.

In the end, we got the second place of the hackathon. It is really exciting when I tried to remember the experience. It is like the line between winning or losing it the time when we choose to give up or not. Yoda said that "Do or do not, there is no try". It was a great moment to won the hackathon, but the accident made it perfect. :D.